I'm back from my adventures!

After a short-term hiatus, I am back home from numerous weeks of traveling and adventures! Although I feel I missed a giant opportunity to blog during May- mental health month- my experiences during May and what I've learned are abundantly more important than posting to a blog. plus, no Wi-Fi in the middle of nowhere. (After our trip in May was another short trip home to Michigan in June for my little brother’s wedding.  So cute! But that’s why here we are in July and I am finally blogging about my trips)

little bro's beach wedding

What's it like to go on vacation with a mental illness?  Is it too stressful? How do you manage with the day-to-day needed energy of an action-packed road trip?  What happens if you relapse on a trip and you are far away from home and have no way to escape?

These are thoughts that had slid through my mind before committing to extended trips.  I'll tell you about what we all did on our voyage and throughout the experience, you'll get the answers for yourself.

pre-planning

My parents started planning this amazing trip over a year ago.  When the planning started, I could hardly believe I would be part of such a enormous adventure.  We were to start in Reno Nevada, drive through snow and dangerous mountain passes to Yosemite National Park, stay at the Majestic/Awanee, drive through more mountain passes to Bodie which is an old abandoned ghost town, drive through more mountains and break through into Lake Tahoe, spend a night there, and then off to Virginia City Nevada where Eddie and I were married on August 29^th of 2015! (we haven’t been to Virginia City since our wedding)

dealing with reality of how to take care of Peanut

Now as you know, my cat Peanut has been sick. She was diagnosed with feline kidney failure in January. She needs sub-q fluids every day.  That regrettably means we can’t board her, it would be billed as a “hospitalization”.  Which is approx. $700 per night.  It was emotional for me to even contemplate leaving Peanut for 10 days.  We found a great sitter, but she can only come twice a day and it costs a lot of money too.  We just needed to train someone who was willing to stay at our house for that long to give her fluids.  Which really isn’t too hard, but you don’t want to have a fear of needles.  Luckily, we found that perfect sitter in Eddie’s Mom.  My MIL (mother-in-law) is an amazingly caring and giving woman and stayed all by herself for that lengthy amount of time and took care of Peanut and Hazelnut my zebra finch the whole time we were gone.  It gave me such a tranquil feeling knowing she was in good hands.  Especially since we were in and out of phone service the whole trip. (what’s up with hotels having shitty wi-fi btw?)    

building up stamina in anticipation of strenuous daily activities

The conditioning and build up of a trip that consisted of strenuous hikes was a little over whelming.  Only when I started to act on it, did I become more and more encouraged.  I was walking every day, getting my steps in! I was on my elliptical every day, doing yoga as usual.  It helped that Fitbit has different “trails” you can “hike” with your friends and family competitively and a few of those hikes featured Yosemite! I got to see the Mist Trail before hiking the mist trail!  So, Eddie and I here in California were “competing” with my parents back in Michigan everyday and each progress point you made in your journey you would get a new 360-degree view of a gorgeous Yosemite landmark.  SO INSPIRING!

we made it up the Mist trail!

preparing from daily life of house-bound to 10 days of travel

We all know that life of a severely depressed person is not glamourous nor on the go.  Unless you count visits to doctor’s appointments which, even then, well admittedly sometimes we don’t even make those.  But just like I did for training for the hiking, I took baby steps and built up my stamina a little bit each day.  There’s not a whole lot I can do to prepare myself for the daily on-sought of human interaction.  People around where I live are just not that friendly and I don’t have the opportunities to interact with people on a daily basis.  It really is just me, My ‘Nuts (Peanut and Hazelnut) and my hubby.  So that was something I was going to have play by ear. 

Are you ready to join me for the rest of the trip?  We start in Reno and I’ll tell you all about it on my next post!  It was nice finally reaching out to you all!  Hope you didn’t miss me too much!

xoxo,

Lindsay

Biggest little city in the world!

P.S. if you are still reading this far...I way simplified my website since I haven't been using it professional in years.  and for the first time I went off the template with colors and shapes. and I rather like it! What do you think? lindsayloomis.com